Wealth Secrets of The One Percent How The Super-Rich Became Sup

Wealth Secrets of the One Percent: How the super-rich became super rich
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Wealth Secrets of the One Percent: How the super-rich

became super rich
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Sam Wilkin reveals the key factors and personality traits that set the super-rich apart
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7 JULY 2015 10:00AM
"Let us assume, dear reader, that you are interested in one thing and one thing only: obtaining a
vast fortune. So begins economist Sam Wilkins new book, Wealth Secrets of the One Percent, on
how the super rich became just that. The fortune, Wilkin clarifies, is not the stuff of fancy cars
and a holiday home on the Amalfi Coast, but yachts and personal helicopters, diamondencrusted light fixtures, stately homes and private islands.
he sort of fortune, in other words, only available to the worlds 1,826 billionaires and well out
of the reach of the wildest imaginations of the rest of us.
But Wilkin says he can change all of that. He has spent years researching the machinations of the
uber rich and claims to have homed in on their wealth secrets. Pay attention, for this could be
your chance to follow in the immaculate Italian leather shod footsteps of the worlds one per cent.
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Get rich quick tomes are, of course, nothing new, and usually more common to a Waterstones
bargain bucket than an oligarchics book shelf - if such a thing exists. However, what makes this
book different is Sam Wilkins is an inside man.
The 41-year-old is a senior advisor for Oxford Economics (one of the worlds foremost global
research consultancies) and Oxford Analytica which provides strategic advice to more than 50
governments across the globe. He works with some of the worlds largest companies and even the
odd billionaire sadly, he wont say which. Wilkin has previously written several economic theory
books, but this one, published worldwide this month, is different. It zeros in on how the wealthy
made it and attempts to answer the billion-dollar question: "How can I get me some of that?"
We meet for dinner at a harbourside restaurant in Amsterdam. Wilkin is Buckinghamshire-born
but lives in New York and is travelling back via Holland after giving a lecture in China. From the
books amoral money-grabbing tone, I am half-expecting a Wolf of Wall Street character to breeze
in, perhaps arriving by launch from some distantly moored super yacht. Instead I am greeted by a
bespectacled figure in a suit crumpled by his long-haul flight. He prefers one glass of beer to a
bottle of vintage champagne.
Warren Buffett, the world's third richest man
So the obvious question, and one I am grilling him on before he has even buttered his bread, is
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exactly how does somebody (take, just plucking an example out of the sky, a lowly-paid journalist)
become a billionaire? The good news, first, is that it is getting easier. In Britain, alone, the number
of billionaires has increased from 53 to 113 in the past five years. For 2015 there are 290
newcomers on the Forbes global rich list.
Its easier than ever, Wilkin says. Its the rise of the financial sector and the rise of fast growing
emerging markets. These are what an economist would call institutional factors.
The book narrows the so-called wealth secrets down to seven, but for Wilkin only two really
matter: eradicate the competition and take risks with other peoples money.
He cites the example of Microsoft founder and richest person on the planet Bill Gates as
somebody who managed to seize control of an entire market. Same too, the lightning expansion
of Google by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Mark Zuckerbergs Facebook empire.
How the wealthy, and not so wealthy, are taxing themselves Are these the top
35 business women in Britain today?
Wilkin compares this total control of markets by men who had barely finished their degrees to the
robber barons of late 19th century and early 20th century America. While the likes of Rockefeller,
John Pierepont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie managed to hoover up the vast profits of
industrialisation, a century on a privileged few have similarly reaped the rewards of a new digital
economy.
He says the pharmacteutical and technology sectors are nowadays where the true money is to be
made. This is what American investor Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world (net
worth of 72.3 billion dollars), refers to as getting in the right boat.
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Roman Abramovich
The other obvious way to have no competitors is to pick a place where nobody else wants to do
business. The best place to do business is really the worst he says. You want a place that is so
hard to do business in that nobody else can get one started.
The most famous example of this, he says, is the Wild East of post-Communist Russia during the
Nineties where men like Roman Abramovich(last week spotted sailing his 557ft super yacht
through the Scottish Western isles) made their wealth.
By 2004, Moscow was home to more billionaires than New York and Wilkin says more than ever
this is the wealth secret that dominates the rich list. The emerging markets of China, India, Brazil
and Mexico are now home to almost one in four of the worlds billionaires.
Clearly, knowing where and how to operate is not enough. Personality is also key and Wilkin says
there are obvious traits that unite a lot of the people in the book, going as far back as Marcus
Licinius Crassus, the Ancient Roman known as one of the richest men that has ever lived. The
corporate matiness of modern billionaires, as personified by Richard Branson chillaxing on
his private paradise island of Necker, masks a steely resolve. This, Wilkin says, is the main
disclaimer for readers. Knowing what you can do to be rich is not the same as being able to
execute it.
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Melinda and Bill Gates CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
These people tend to be pretty merciless, really competitive, he says. You have to go in willing
to fight tooth and nail to be that winner and be comfortable and untroubled by wiping everybody
else out.
Wilkin talks about the hard-charged testosterone environment of modern day financiers, a lot of
it resting on ego and still very much a mans world.
Another uniting personality trait he says he has noticed among billionaires is they tend to declare
their financial objectives as young children. Bill Gates did it to his high school friends. Andrew
Carnegie, too. Having the objective just to have money is a major driver of people who become
super rich.
He himself comes from normal middle class stock - his English father is a retired professor, his
American mother a former librarian and admits he is full of respect for the amazing gumption
of your average billionaire. Its impossible not to admire these people, Wilkin says. They really
are larger than life characters who have done amazing things.
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And what about him, I wonder. If he does know their secrets why doesnt Wilkin become a
billionaire himself? He insists, in between sips of mint tea, that he has no desire for great wealth
mapping how it is made is interesting enough.
He says the moneyed herd of super rich bankers and the like are a regular sight in Manhattan,
but the endless desire to stay on top at all costs which unites so many billionaires, is not for him.
Happiness, he says, should not depend on ones bank balance.
None the less, when I ask what he would spend his fictional billions on, it is impossible to ignore
the glint in the economists eye. Nothing ostentatious, but I would like to have a nice place in a
few countries. Maybe Oxford, maybe New York, maybe Japan
As he trails off, I wonder if perhaps the one per cent may soon have another member?
Wealth secrets
Pick a field where you can establish a monopoly such as Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim
who from 2010-2013 was ranked the richest person in the world after taking control of the
countrys entire telecommunications market.
Expand as quickly as possible Amazon has eschewed early profitability to becoming the
everything shop and as a result investors have poured money in.
The worst place to do business is really the best it is easier to dominate emerging markets
due to the lack of competition and potential for growth.
Take risks with other peoples money do all you can to encourage investors and then gamble
their money rather than your own.
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To get rich you need to own your own business and property rights Bill Gatess Microsoft at
one point had a 95 per cent share of the operating systems market, protected by intellectual
property rights.
Spin complex laws into gold set up in industries bound by such convoluted regulation for
example agricultural subsidies and banking regulation - that it is easy to bend the rules as
nobody understands anyway.
Establish business networks telecoms networks and shipping networks have created a lot of
billionaires fortunes as they can squeeze out all competition.
Wealth Secrets of the One Percent, by Sam Wilkin, is published by Sceptre, priced
20. To order your copy for 16 plus p&p, call 0844 871 1514 or
visit books.telegraph.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk
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Wealth Secrets of the One Percent: How the super-rich became super rich

Money Fame and fortune

Money Fame and fortune

Wealth Secrets of the One Percent: How the super-rich

What will the future family home look like?

7 JULY 2015 10:00AM

Warren Buffett, the world's third richest man

Melinda and Bill Gates CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Follow Telegraph Money

Putting the sterling in

Could brushing your teeth

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The key to good health in old age is so

People Don't Know

The Claims Guys

Take care seriously

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Your mortgage is going to cost more very soon - here is why

How an extra 1pc investment fee will cost you 16 years of

Buy these bargain stocks before they make a comeback

How to manage your personal

Helping an entire global

The introduction of new data regulations will

Edwina Dunn revolutionised

Featured Current Accounts (T&C's Apply)

220 M&S gift card

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'Does Scottish Power owe us compensation?'

How tall, terraced houses became the talk of the town

The story of a humble dairy, from high society to holiday stay

Your mortgage is going to cost more very soon - here is why

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'How I positioned my 1.6bn portfolio for higher inflation'

Telegraph Media Group Limited 2016

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